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Comparing hard and soft infrastructure | Linux Journal

This is the 2nd in what looks to be a series. As the title indicates, Doc Searls compares infrastructures -- what we'd traditionally consider infrastructure (the "hard" infrastructure of roads, sewers, etc.) and Linux/ the Net -- programming -- the "soft" infrastructure that pervades our existence today.

Tags: infrastructure, linux, doc_searls on 2008-05-02 -All Annotations (4) -About

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- Infrastructure is natural. That is, we try to make it as additional to nature as possible. It sometimes improves on nature, but more often serves as an adjuct to it, altering it in some way, always for practical purposes.
- Infrastructure is patchy. In computing terms, we patch and debug it all the time. Even terminology changes. CATV becomes COMS becomes BROADBAND, all on a series of manhole covers. Sidewalks of brick are torn up and laid down again, over and over. Asphalt streets are patchworks of exposed and buried culverts, piping and conduit.
- Credit is interesting, but secondary.Companies providing infrastructure sign their work, often in forms that last decades or centuries. At a certain point this credit-taking ceases to be promotional and begins becoming archival, historical. Steel service covers bear the signatures of Edison Electric Illuminating, the Bell System, Cambridge Electric Lighting, McClure (a dead fiber company), MetroMedia (another dead fiber company), and Simpson Brothers, and countless other names once considered, mostly by themselves, as permanent.
- Re-usability matters. Pipes and poles made for one thing get used and re-used for other things. Poles that first carried electricity later came to carry phone, cable TV, and fiber optic cabling to carry phone, TV and internet service.
- Ease of servicability matters. Streets are marked everywhere with red (electric), yellow (gas), green (non-potable water), orange (communications), blue (potable water) and white (planned construction) graffiti. That these are all ugly is of little concern.
- Infrastructure is vernacular. It's local, and the expertise behind it is local.
Add Sticky Note
- Something else to consider here: density affects infrastructure, and therefore how socio-political trends manifest. For eg., NYC Mayor Bloomberg, in support of Obama's opposition to a gas tax holiday, said, "The last thing we need to do is to encourage people to drive more and to take away the monies we need for infrastructure in this country."
  
  He added that we need to get people out of their cars. I completely agree, so I was really struck by some "tweets" that high gas prices would keep people from driving to the polling stations! Ok, those tweets were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but there was a kernel of truth in them. If you live in a city (like NYC), which has great density, you'll have access to public transportation (infrastructure) and you won't need a private car to "get to the polling station." However, as soon as you get to the suburbs, that piece of infrastructure could easily not be there, and you then might well be dependent on having a car to vote.
  posted by lampertina on 2008-05-02 06:09:16
- For reference, the Bloomberg article:
  http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/05/01/967843.aspx
  posted by lampertina on 2008-05-02 06:10:18
- So in other words, infrastructure works or manifests differently depending on the density context -- and it might be much more efficient the more dense and networked its connections and build-out are.
  
  Efficient doing what? Efficient at giving people time to focus on things other than providing their own private infrastructure (personal car, eg.).
  posted by lampertina on 2008-05-02 06:12:43